Most of us have seen a very ugly, tasteless mezzotinto engraving representing Henry VIII. in an impossible attitude, leering at a coarse Anne Boleyn. I am always sorry to see the words “_Hogarth, pinxit_,” in the left-hand corner of this inelegant performance, and sorrier to know that he did indeed achieve that daub; and that the picture was hung in the “old great room at the right hand of entry into the gardens.” Indeed it is a barbarous thing. The background is, I suppose, intended to represent an apartment in Cardinal Wolsey’s sumptuous mansion at York Place; but it would do better for a chamber at the “Rose,” or at the “Three Tuns,” in Chandos Street. I can speak of it no more with patience. Why paint it, William? Yet it had all the honours of the mezzotint scraper; it is engraved likewise in line; and Allan Ramsay—“Gentle Shepherd” Ramsay—who should have known better, wrote some eulogistic verses by way of epigraph. Nor did Jonathan Tyers of Vauxhall look the gift horse in the mouth. He was glad to hang the sorry canvas in his old great room; and in testimony of many kindnesses received from the painter, who had “summer lodgings at South Lambeth,” presented him with a perpetual ticket of admission to the gardens for himself and friends. Fancy being on the free-list of Vauxhall for ever! The ticket was of gold, and bore this inscription:— In perpetuam beneficii memoriam. Hogarth was a frequent visitor at the “Spring Gardens,” Vauxhall. There, I will be bound, he and his pretty young wife frequently indulged in that cool summer evening’s stroll which the French call _prendre le frais_. There he may have had many a bowl of arrack punch with Harry Fielding—he was to live to be firm friends with the tremendous author of “_Tom Jones_;” there I think he may have met a certain Ferdinand Count Fathom, and a Somersetshire gentleman of a good estate but an indifferent temper and conversation, by name Western, together with my Lady Bellaston (in a mask and a cramoisy grogram sack, laced with silver), and, once in a way, perhaps, Mr. Abraham Adams, clerk. There is an authentic anecdote, too, of Hogarth standing one evening at Vauxhall listening to the band, and of a countryman pointing to the roll of paper with which the conductor was beating time, and asking what musical instrument “that white thing was?” “Friend,” answered William, “_it is a single handed drum_”—not a very bright joke, certainly; but then, as has been pertinently observed, a quibble can be excused to Hogarth, if a conundrum can be pardoned to Swift.